ChangeMakers is linked to The Gamaliel Foundation in the United States. Organisers from Gamaliel regularly come over to the UK to run training courses with ChangeMakers.

About Gamaliel

The U.S. based Gamaliel Foundation is an organising institute that brings together communities of people living out their faith and values to bring about justice and collectively transform society. They affirm equal opportunity for all and abhor all forms of injustice flowing from racism, poverty, and intolerance.

The Gamaliel Foundation was originally established in 1968 to support the Contract Buyers League, an African American organisation fighting to protect homeowners on Chicago’s Westside who had been discriminated against by banks and saving and loan institutions. In l986, the Foundation was restructured as an organising institute providing resources to community leaders in the efforts to build and maintain powerful organisations in low income communities. The Gamaliel Foundation has grown from three to more than forty-five affiliates in seventeen states and in three provinces of South Africa.

History of the Movement:

This type of community organising began in Chicago in 1938. Saul Alinsky created the Back of the Yards Community Council. The organisation operated in the shadow of Chicago’s stock yards. The community was beset with poverty, political corruption, gangs, disease, deteriorating housing and inadequate schools; but most of all it was beset with a sense of powerlessness. The organisation successfully engaged people to change the conditions of the community. Its motto was: ‘We shall decide our own destiny’. To a large extent and for some time they did just that. Many organisations were created utilising the model of the Back of the Yards Community Council. Unfortunately most of those organisations have dissolved, become stagnant, parochial and marginalised; have evolved into social service, advocacy, or economic development corporations; or have become dominated by politicians. The original mission of empowerment and expansion of democracy has, all too frequently, been lost. To insure the promise of community organising, the Gamaliel Foundation was born.